ENS Labs, the company behind Ethereum Name Service, announced on Tuesday that they have chosen Linea technology to build Namechain, the next layer-2 network.

Linea is a zero-knowledge rollup released in July 2023 and developed by Ethereum infrastructure giant ConsenSys. According to L2Beat, Linea is the seventh-largest rollup network with $1 billion locked in its ecosystem.

ENS Labs stated that they chose Linea to build their network for two main reasons. “One is a matter of value alignment,” said Nick Johnson, founder and lead developer of ENS. The other reason is related to speed.

Rollups are a special type of blockchain where transaction processing is possible faster and at lower cost. There are two types of rollups: optimistic and zero-knowledge. Optimistic rollups offer a seven-day objection period before transaction results are finalized (such proofs are considered “optimistic” on the assumption that their contents will not be challenged by anyone).

In contrast, zero-knowledge rollups use zero-knowledge cryptography to secure evidence and finalize that evidence in minutes, and this technology is considered superior by many.

Although ENS has been described as the “phone book” for Web3, a more accurate analogy would be the domain name service (DNS) of the internet. A domain name such as “site.com” is easier to remember and type than a numeric IP address.

Similarly, since ENS acquired naming rights in 2021, addresses like Paris Hilton’s “parishilton.eth” become more relatable than strings of letters and numbers composed of Ethereum wallet addresses.

Stating that they need “fast final verification” for this service, Johnson said: “You want to be able to update your ENS name and ensure that the chain reflects it at the smallest intervals. In order to do this and at the same time keep it decentralized and secure, fast final verification is required, and optimistic rollups cannot provide this.” ,” he said.

This news comes at a time when other major crypto projects have announced their intentions to implement layer-2 networks. But unlike ENS, some of blockchain’s biggest names are using Optimism’s OP Stack to build their networks.

ENS will be one of the first major projects to build a layer-2 blockchain built on Linea’s technology (Linea is also building a layer-2 network for blockchain wallet app Status).

The Linea team announced plans to launch the Linea token last month. Both Johnson and Linea founder Nicolas Liochon told CoinDesk that there are no concrete plans on how this token will be used in the Namechain ecosystem.

Liochon said that the Namechain team’s work on the Linea stack will help strengthen and decentralize the L2 protocol.

“We really want to have multiple organizations contributing to Linea, and we’re working on more organizations to make the network more secure,” he said.

“So we want multiple teams to ensure decentralization.”